


Seldom Make Passes

by Chash



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Glasses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5843536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy starts wearing his glasses more; Clarke notices. Everyone notices that Clarke notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seldom Make Passes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wanttobeatree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/gifts).



> Tree prompted me with "you should write a fic where someone keeps sending clarke pictures of bellamy wearing glasses when she's in class" and that seemed like an appropriate subject for my 150th fic in this fandom. Because I have a thing about glasses.

Bellamy starts it, not that he knows he's starting it. He sends a group text while Clarke is in her gross anatomy class with pictures of himself in two different pairs of glasses and the caption: _Anyone have strong opinions on which is better?_

Clarke does, in fact, have a lot of strong opinions about Bellamy's glasses, namely that he should wear them way more than he does and that they're bad for her mental well being. So she saves both pictures and then settles in to really study them. Because who needs class, right? She's totally going to pass this test. And Bellamy needs guidance.

The first picture he's rocking black hipster frames, the thick ones that look fake even when they aren't. He still looks great in them, at least to Clarke, so either he looks good in anything, or Clarke is way too far gone. Probably both. Stupid Bellamy.

The second pair look like old-man glasses, and are insanely unflattering while still looking good. They make him look like he's going to start ranting about commies and Nam and how kids these days don't appreciate the importance of hard work. Which, to be fair, aside from Nam, he probably _would_.

_Is there a third option?_ she replies, and that's her first mistake, apparently.

She gets an individual text from Raven in minutes that says, _Your kink is showing_ and one to the group from Octavia that says, _Don't encourage him!!!_ She follows up with, _But those are both awful, Bell, yeah_ two seconds later, so at least she probably doesn't suspect Clarke has any special investment in this.

_I'm being a helpful friend_ , Clarke texts Raven, and definitely doesn't check her phone three more times in the next ten minutes to see if Bellamy has responded. Ideally with additional pictures. 

He sends two more options before the class is over, and Clarke dutifully saves both and tells him to go with the black wire frames. 

_You never even wear your glasses_ , she adds, in a private text.

_I'm thinking I might start_ , he replies. _Thanks for the help._

*

"I'm not saying you were wrong, just that you're the opposite of unbiased," Raven tells her that night. "You just wanted more pictures of Bellamy in glasses."

"I wanted him to not look like a hipster or a senior citizen. Friends don't let friends buy ugly accessories."

"Uh huh. Let me see your phone."

"For what?"

"To check that you saved all the pictures. Including the senior citizen one." Clarke flushes, and Raven smirks. "Thought so."

"I'll probably delete most of them later."

Raven rolls her eyes. "You're at least admitting you want to marry him now, right? Not just saying he's _very aesthetically appealing_?"

"Well, he is." She scrubs her face. "Yeah, I want to marry him. So of course I want him to have the hottest glasses."

"Pathetic," says Raven, and Clarke does not disagree.

*

Clarke has been trying to work out how to marry Bellamy Blake for about a year now. He joined her social circle because he got a job as an associate professor at her school and moved in with his sister, who's dating Clarke's friend Lincoln. He started hanging out with them because he didn't really know anyone, but he's continued to come to Jasper and Monty's game night and hang out with them with his own friends, now that they exist. The two of them usually grab lunch on campus once or twice a week, when they can coordinate it, but their relationship is text-based most of the time, because they both have weird schedules and a lot of shit going on.

Case in point: Clarke is in her Monday night class, and Bellamy is texting her that Raven cheats at Mario Kart while Raven sends selfies of herself, Bellamy, and Miller hanging out. 

She knows exactly why Raven is doing it; Bellamy is wearing his glasses and a tight t-shirt, and Clarke is insanely jealous that they're all having fun while she's struggling to stay awake in her stupid lecture. The glasses are just rubbing it in.

_I already hate this class, you don't have to be a dick_ , she tells Raven, and Raven replies with a picture of Bellamy puckering his lips, like he's blowing her a kiss.

_We all miss you, obv_ , says Raven, and Clarke scowls.

As if that isn't bad enough, during her Thursday class, _Miller_ texts her a picture of Bellamy, soaking wet, in his glasses, flipping off the camera. 

_He fell into a fountain_ , Miller explains.

_Thanks for keeping me posted_ , she says, because--why is _Miller_ doing this? She likes Miller, but he's Bellamy's friend, not hers.

_I'm sending it around as much as possible so he doesn't have a reason to kill me. It's already out in the world. He can't keep it quiet. Might as well let me live._ And then he sends another picture, this one of Bellamy, bare-chested, wringing out his shirt. _That one's just for everyone I know who's attracted to dudes and isn't related to him_.

_We appreciate it_ , she says. And then, because her self-control is non-existent, she texts Bellamy: _How did you fall in a fountain?_

_I hate Miller_ , he replies, instantly.

_You hate Miller so much you fell into a fountain?_

_I hate you too_ , he says. _He said I wasn't coordinated enough to walk around the lip of the fountain, and then he talked shit to distract me until I fell in_.

Clarke bites back a laugh, because she's _in class_ , but she can just picture it. For all Bellamy is thirty-one, a gainfully employed adult and actual authority figure, he's kind of ridiculous too. An idle comment from Miller turning into a challenge, and Miller taking advantage of it for all he's worth is just like them.

_Oh yeah, of course_ , she texts back. _We've all been there_.

He texts her a pouting selfie, his hair dripping onto his glasses, and Clarke responds with a smiley face emoji.

*

On Tuesday, she stops by his office on her way to lunch, because Tuesday is the day Bellamy is most likely to forget to eat. Which is saying a lot; Bellamy's not good at self-care.

"You really meant you were going to wear your glasses more," is unfortunately what comes out of her mouth when she sees him. It's probably better than _holy shit, your arms look amazing when you roll up your sleeves_ or _do you want to do me on your desk_ , but _hi_ would have been best, all things considered.

He looks up and offers her a soft smile. "Oh, hey, Clarke. Did I know you were coming?"

"Nope. But I'm getting lunch, so you're getting lunch."

He frowns and pushes his hair back off his forehead. "Oh, huh. It is lunch time, isn't it."

Clarke snorts. "I'm constantly amazed you survived to adulthood."

"And raised Octavia to adulthood too," he points out, grabbing his phone and wallet. "I'm two for two on making successful humans."

"That makes it sound like you have two kids."

"True," he says. "Thank god I don't."

She waits until they're outside and on their way to Miller's pub before she says, "Seriously, why the glasses?"

"Huh?"

"I'd known you for like five months before I even found out you _needed_ glasses," she says. She remembers it clearly; she'd been picking him up for a day trip, and he'd overslept. He opened the door in his pajama pants, shirtless, his hair sticking in every direction, glasses askew on his face.

"Sorry, alarm didn't go off," he said, and Clarke had known she was attracted to him before, but it had been really a lot to take in before eight a.m.

It had been pretty disappointing when he disappeared into his room and emerged wearing real clothes and his contacts. Not that he didn't look good in his t-shirt and jeans, but--Bellamy right out of bed really was a treat. And that had pretty much been when Clarke realized that she had more than just a little crush on him. It was impossible to pretend that she didn't want to see him like that all the time.

She still blames the glasses.

"I heard they make me look older," he says, bringing her back to the present.

"Is that a problem for you?"

He grins. "Apparently I looked kind of like a confused grad student who wandered in front of a classroom last year. According to some of my colleagues."

"And glasses help?"

"Seemed like it was worth a try." He worries his lip, not looking at her. "What, you don't like them?"

"No!" she says, way too quickly. "I mean, I do. Like them. You look nice."

There's a slight pause as he pulls the door open, and Clarke tells herself not to blush. But all he says is, "Thanks. Glad you think so."

*

Clarke's never gotten the whole _everyone can see it_ thing with pre-relationships. Part of it is probably just that she's honestly terrible at noticing this stuff herself. She's terrible with her own feelings, so it's no surprise that she misses everyone else's too. She was the only one who had no idea Monty and Miller were going to hook up, or Raven and Wells, and she's gotten in fights at bars because she's so shitty at picking up signals that she doesn't realize people she's hitting on have significant others.

It's a problem no one else seems to share, though, because _everyone_ seems to not only know she has a thing for Bellamy, generally, but for Bellamy's glasses, specifically.

Raven decides, for some reason, that Clarke obviously doesn't hate her Monday-night lecture enough, and makes it her mission to send pictures of Bellamy all the time. Clarke is pretty sure she _saves_ pictures of Bellamy, just so she can send them along when Clarke is in class. But most of the time, Raven is actually hanging out with him, and she'll send pictures of Bellamy and Wells bickering about shit with captions like, _We could have awesome double dates, just saying_.

Octavia's pictures come less often and are more stressful. Clarke and Octavia are friends, but they're pretty new friends; they'd only known each other for a few months when Bellamy moved to town, and Clarke doesn't know if Octavia would really approve of the two of them dating. She likes to think so, but--the Blakes are really close. And Lincoln has definitely told Octavia some _Clarke's relationship disasters_ stories. She might want her brother to date someone more competent.

So Clarke always ends up reading into Octavia's texts, even though they're mostly group texts of Bellamy scowling at the camera. Clarke still wonders if there's some deeper meaning to it, if Octavia knows, as Raven does, how distracting she finds unexpected Bellamy pictures.

Miller sends her stuff a lot, which is weird, but Miller's always weird. He might be trying to match make, or he might just like embarrassing Bellamy. It's really just impossible to tell with Miller.

Monty sends fewer pictures, but he _definitely_ knows. Same for Lincoln and Wells. She gets so many pictures of Bellamy that she doesn't even bother saving all of them; half of her text messages are pictures of him. They're not hard to access.

"You know I don't like being in class on Monday, right?" she asks Raven, somewhat petulant, when she gets back to the apartment after her lecture a month into what she's thinking of as Operation Bellamy.

"You might have mentioned it fifteen thousand times."

She collapses onto the couch next to her roommate, leaning back and closing her eyes. "I'm just saying, you don't have to send me pictures of how much fun you're having without me. Especially when you're hanging out with my stupid crush."

"Oh, wait, is that what you think I'm doing?" Raven asks, sounding genuinely surprised.

"It's not?"

"I thought it was nice for you, like, yeah, you're stuck in class, here are some pictures of Bellamy to make you feel better. That's how I get him to pose, I'm just like, Clarke is probably lonely, give her some love, and he'll do basically anything I tell him to. I'm kind of impressed I'm not making him do worse shit, honestly. I might be becoming a better person."

Clarke opens her eyes and rolls her head over to look at Raven. "You're not trying to make me hate my life?"

"Nope. I figured you liked cute pictures of Bellamy in his glasses. Just judging from, you know. How often you get drunk and moan about how much you want to jump him and how the way he's wearing glasses all the time now is destroying your sanity and running you out of vibrator batteries at an unprecedented rate."

Clarke flushes. "I don't say that."

"You do. Not a lot, but--" Raven shrugs. "I'm not judging that much. It's a good look for him. And you were ridiculously into him before that, so it's not like you're shallow. Just, you know. Kind of pathetic."

"Thanks. And thanks for starting a _conspiracy_."

"A what?"

"I get at least two pictures of Bellamy a day. Did you put Miller up to it?"

"Nope, that's on Miller." Raven considers her. "Two pictures of Bellamy a day?"

"There's definitely a conspiracy," Clarke mutters.

"Miller's probably fucking with _Bellamy_ ," says Raven. "Not you. So--that's good news, right?" Clarke frowns, and Raven rolls her eyes. "Come on. If Bellamy wasn't into you, why would Miller be fucking with him like that?"

Clarke considers. "Did he send you pictures when Bellamy fell into the fountain?"

"How does a grown adult fall into a fountain?" Raven asks, sounding genuinely baffled, and Clarke finds herself grinning.

Maybe there isn't an Operation Bellamy; maybe she's _special_.

*

When she goes to grab Bellamy for lunch the next day, he's with a student, a cute, jocky guy who looks vaguely disappointed when Bellamy sees her, grins, and says, "Hey, don't leave, I'll be done in a sec."

Clarke smiles back, a little awkward, because she _had_ been planning to just leave, if he hadn't seen her. She didn't want to interrupt. And she's incredibly nervous; she would have taken the excuse. 

"Sorry, this is my only chance to eat between classes," he tells the kid. "But I think we basically got it covered, right? Your translation is solid, and we're talking about it in class before the paper's due, so if you have more questions, just bring them. Probably everyone else is wondering too, and someone's got to be the first to ask. You'll be doing them a favor."

"Yeah, I feel a lot better about it," says the kid. "Thanks for talking that through with me, Professor Blake."

"No problem. I'll see you on Thursday."

The kid's eyes flick up to Clarke as he passes, and Clarke offers him her best smile. She's not really surprised kids come to Bellamy's office hours to get more one-on-one time with him; after all, she's showing up to drag him to lunch because _she's_ got a crush on him too. She just has the advantages of being closer to his age, in his social circle, and not taking any of his classes.

"It's weird to remember people see you as an authority figure," she comments, closing the door behind her as she actually enters the office. "I guess they don't know you got wasted last weekend and went on a twenty-minute rant about whether or not the Ninja Turtles could beat the Powerpuff Girls in a fight."

He grins. "The Powerpuff Girls can _fly_ , Clarke."

"I don't know why you're still convinced I have a horse in this race. I continue to have no opinion on this."

"Which is sad," he says, standing and stretching. "These are the important questions of our time."

"Uh huh." She stops him with her hand on his chest as he tries to walk past her to the door. "Did you know I get at least one picture of you from each of our friends every single week?"

He looks caught somewhere between curiosity and embarrassment. "Uh, what?"

"Raven sends them on Monday nights when I'm in class. Octavia likes to give me reaction shots of you watching Jeopardy. Lincoln is all about cute Blake sibling bonding, so, you know, the two of you screaming at each other about dumb shit. I don't know how Miller decides, but I think it's just every time he feels guilty for thinking you look kind of hot, because he definitely takes the hottest pictures of you. I guess he figures I'll appreciate them."

"Seriously?"

"I do, so he's not wrong."

Her hand is still on his chest, and he looks down at it, wetting his lips. "I had no idea everyone sent you pictures of me. I only get, like, one or two pictures of you a week. Usually from Monty. I figured Miller told him--" His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Clarke's eyes drop to watch immediately. It makes him laugh. "Okay, fine, yeah, Miller and I totally gossip about how I've got a giant thing for you and he makes fun of me about it. I figured he told Monty so they could both make fun of me. Which is pretty egotistical, honestly. They probably have better things to do when they hang out than make fun of me."

"They might not," says Clarke. "Just judging from how much time everyone has to send me pictures of you in glasses."

He frowns, pushes said glasses up on his face, like he only just remembered them. "In glasses?"

Clarke blushes. "I really like your glasses," she mutters. "Apparently everyone noticed."

"I didn't," he says, grinning. "I figured you thought I looked dorky. Why do you think I texted everyone for opinions on the new ones and didn't listen to anyone except you? I was trying to minimize the damage."

"Very sneaky." She threads her fingers in his tie. "I like dorky," she says, and tugs him down to her.

Bellamy's smiling when their mouths meet, smiling when her other hand tangles in his hair, seems almost giddy with it, until Clarke presses in close, kisses him _deep_ , and he finally loses himself in it.

"This really is the only time I have to get lunch," he says, kissing down her neck.

"We can stop."

"No way," he says, grinning up at her. "I just don't want you yelling at me for not eating."

"Insert cunnilingus joke here."

His smile turns wicked. "Who said anything about a joke?" he asks, and Clarke pulls him back up for another kiss as he gets her up onto his desk.

His glasses get completely smudged; Clarke considers it a major achievement.

*

She doesn't manage to take a picture of him until that night; Raven's hanging out with Wells, so he comes over with a pile of grading, and the shot she ends up getting is of him half lying in her lap, pen in his mouth as he skims an essay. It's a nice shot, if she does say so herself.

_I promise I can get my own pictures of Bellamy_ , she adds, when she sends the picture to their group text. _But thanks for the assist, guys_.

_Please do not send any more of your pictures of my brother to the group_ , says Octavia, instantly.

_Say aye to opt into a special group text for Clarke's dirty pictures of Bellamy_ , Raven says, and half the group--Bellamy included--has said aye before Clarke manages to get her response out.

_There will be no dirty pictures of Bellamy group text_ , she says. _I'm putting my foot down._

_It's like you don't even appreciate our hard work_ , says Monty, and Bellamy says, "You really don't."

"How many dirty pictures of you are you expecting me to take?" she asks, and he grins.

"I'm photogenic, Clarke. You won't be able to resist."

She does, mostly, but he can't. He sends five selfies during her next Monday lecture, but somehow, it's not so bad, now that they're dating.

Really, it just gives her something to look forward to.


End file.
